Wednesday, February 22, 2017

President Trump argues through his Twitter posts that his
administration’s travel ban on immigrants and refugees from 7 majority-Muslim
countries, currently on hold because of court rulings against it, is about
keeping “bad people” out of the country.
Commenting on the initial ruling by a federal judge suspending the ban,
which was then upheld by a 10-1 ruling by a federal appeals court, President
Trump tweeted:

“The judge opens up our country to potential terrorists and
others that do not have our best interests at heart. Bad people are very
happy!”

“Because the ban was lifted by a judge, many very bad and
dangerous people may be pouring into our country. A terrible decision.”

“What is our country coming to when a judge can halt a
Homeland Security travel ban and anyone, even with bad intentions, can come
into U.S.?”

Rather than continuing to fight it out in court, though, the
administration has announced that it will issue a revised executive order this
week, one that it believes will pass muster with the courts. We will see what
the new order says and if the courts agree.

From the standpoint of what’s best for health care, though,
ACP believes that it is essential that the revised order discontinue the policy
of discriminating against foreign-born physicians and medical students,
especially Muslims, from the 7 designated countries, and thousands of refugees
from them seeking shelter in the United States.

The fact is that rather than keeping out “bad people” who
want to do us harm, President Trump’s executive order denied travel to many
physicians who live in the United States with valid visas, physicians who
provide care to hundreds of thousands of patients. Among them are:

Dr. M. Ihsan Kaadan, a Syrian doctor who treated patients
suffering from the horrors inflicted on the civilians of Aleppo, Syria; he
later was granted a visa to enter the United States to continue his
studies at Brandeis and his internal medicine residency training at
Massachusetts General. “In hopes that
leaders and politicians around the world reconsider any plans to ban refugees
who seek to escape brutal wars and other human tragedies” Dr. Kaadan recently
wrote of his experiences:

“I am a Muslim and I am from Syria,
I came here fleeing a brutal war that has killed more than 400,000 men, women, and children. I have
the features that make me look like what some people think of as terrorist. But
I am not a terrorist. In fact, I’m the opposite — I am a patriot for America
and for Syria. I want to serve the country that opened its doors to me and also
help my home country.”

President Trump, Is Dr. Kaadan among the “bad people” you
want to keep out?

Drs. Kaadan and Berzing are hardly alone. There are 15,000
physicians from across the United States that are from the 7 countries
subject to the travel ban, many of whom are providing care to Americans in
underserved communities. Even if the
executive order would allow them to remain in the U.S. as long as they had
valid visas, the travel ban placed them at risk of not being able to reenter
the U.S. if they traveled home to see their families—say to see an ailing aged
parent. In fact, there were at least three physicians in U.S. internal medicine
residency programs, ACP members,
who were traveling abroad at the time the executive order was issued and were
turned away from re-entering the United States. And, according to the
Association of American Medical Colleges, there are currently 260 applicants
from the affected countries among the 35,000 people seeking residency and
fellowship positions in this country.

President Trump, are these 15,000 physicians seeking to
train in the U.S. and provide care to the most underserved Americans among the “bad
people” you want to keep out?

President Trump, are these children among the “bad people”
you want to keep out?

The American College of Physicians has taken
a firm stance against discrimination in immigration policy based on
religion and in
strong opposition to the President’s executive order, and in
support of comprehensive policies to reform immigration laws and policies
to allow physicians and medical students with approved visas to travel freely
to and from the United States, to protect “Dreamers” from deportation, and to
expand the number of refugees accepted into the United States, particularly
those with urgent medical needs. We have also joined
with 11 other internal medicine membership organizations to urge the
Department of Homeland Security to immediately implement changes to lift
restrictions on travel for physicians and medical students with approved visas
and to prioritize admitting refugees who need medical care.

The Trump administration still has a chance to get things
right this time in its revised executive order, by lifting discriminatory
travel restrictions on Muslim physicians and medical students and refugees who
have been thoroughly vetted and approved for visas to travel to and from the
United States. Let’s hope it does,
because maintaining the current policy in some other form is bad for health
care, bad for medical education, and bad for the millions of patients who get
their care from foreign-born physicians—and for many refugees, it’s a matter
of life and death.

Today's question: What do you think of President Trump's travel and immigration ban and ACP's advocacy to overturn it?